


Spin Lies Into Fairydust

by Khrysoprase



Category: Shazam! (2019)
Genre: Backstory, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, PLEASE HEED THE TAGS, Parent/Child Incest, Rating May Change, Recovery, Shazamily (DCU), abuse recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22597663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khrysoprase/pseuds/Khrysoprase
Summary: Mary Bromfield had everything a girl could ask for: a gorgeous mansion of a house in the best neighborhood in Philadelphia, a group of popular and pretty friends at a prestigious private school, talent, intelligence, and a father who adored her. What she didn't have was freedom, or a place to hide when adoration turned to possession. What she always wanted was a knight in shining armor, to rescue her from Gaius Bromfield, who was both Prince Charming and The Big Bad Wolf.This is the story of how she was rescued, by family both blood and adopted, by a literal superhero, by a girlfriend full of unconditional love, and most of all, by herself.
Relationships: Mary Bromfield/Original Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Opposites

**Author's Note:**

> This work is in the same continuity as Drown The Echoes Out, but you don't have to read that story to understand this one, at all.
> 
> Themes for chapters are taken from Femslash February prompts; however, not all chapters will focus on Mary's relationship with her girlfriend. Chapters are not necessarily in chronological order. Flashbacks are told in italics.
> 
> Chapters with a majority focus on the abuse Mary went through will have warnings in the author's notes at the start. Blanket warning for the whole fic: emotional abuse, psychological manipulation, and implied/sometimes outright shown parental incest.
> 
> I held off on using the rape tag because it's not explicit and it's more statutory rape/lack of ability to consent rather than overriding consent, but STILL. Read. The. TAGS. Proceed with caution.

The first time Mary met Shay, her first thought was that this girl was wildly out of her league.

It wasn’t that Shay was too pretty for Mary. She _was_ gorgeous, rich umber skin unblemished, dark inky eyes sparkling, impeccably dressed and with a smile that lit up the room, but the fact that she was a ten out of ten and Mary was a five wasn’t a deal killer. People settled all the time. Friendships were built on shakier foundations all the time; otherwise, Mary would never have had any. The real problem was all the ways in which they were opposites. Shay was clear-spoken, unafraid, lacking in timidity – not aggressive or rude, never rude, but simply confident. Confidence was perhaps the thing Mary admired most in people, perhaps because she’d never managed to have much of that herself, and yet it was also a little alienating. How could she ever hope to be cool to someone who was eternally cool already?

Mary was twelve, going on thirteen, and she wasn’t even a full year out from everything her Gaius had done to her. (That she thought of him as Gaius, not her father, was equal parts trauma response and habit. He’d never felt like a father to her.) She still walked with a limp from the fractured ankle she’d had the night she ran away.

He’d taken a lot from her, over the years, from her confidence to her ability to approach people. _(“Mary Elizabeth Bromfield, did I say you could talk to her?” “No, sir.”)_ So her first week with Shay in their group project was spent focusing on the English project itself, barely meeting anyone’s eyes. _(“Don’t you look at me like that,” he said, and she studied the patterns on the rug, unwilling to raise her eyes even after he’d left.)_

Seventh grade English wasn’t really hard enough to merit all the extra focus, but it was either that or act normal, and one was a lot easier than the other.

_(“You want to be quiet and controlled,” Gaius explains patiently to her. “Quiet and controlled is more intimidating that emotional outbursts. Intimidation is how respect is earned. There is great value in being able to keep your mouth shut, too. No one can use something against you if you didn’t say it.”_

_She wonders if that’s why he’s like this. Her father is the kind of lawyer other lawyers admire and hate in equal parts. He can construct elaborate lies on the spot, retain every detail flawlessly as if it were truth, make unlimited amounts of eye contact and go hours without letting the opposition get under his skin. Nothing gets to him. No one can make him angry or make him say something to sabotage his own case, not even the press or the internet. Gaius is in control every second of every day. It’s cool, most of the time. She likes knowing Gaius will always be there to keep them safe, with his voice like velvet and his smooth reassurances. He’s almost like a superhero, in her eyes._

_When she’s curled up crying about her best friend declaring they can’t be friends anymore, it’s a lot less cool. This isn’t helping, but he thinks it is. Maybe it would be better, easier, if she could just pretend it didn’t bother her. That’s a fair point. She’s seven, though, and she doesn’t want to hear fair points or sage advice, she wants to lay here and cry and sulk. It’s the opposite of what he wants her to be doing, and she lets him tempt her out of her sulk with the promise of dinner, but she can’t shake the feeling he’s disappointed in her regardless.)_

She was quiet in class. Controlled, however, wasn’t the word for it. She wanted to be one of Shay’s friends who crowded around her at lunch, chatting and laughing, trading food, making after school plans. If she knew how to be like them she would have been. If she knew how to quit caring, she would have done that instead. Instead, she watched them and felt an uncontrolled longing to have someone, anyone, in her life that would ask her about her day and trade her chips for their fruit cup like a normal person.

_(“We will never be normal,” her sister tells her, with certainty, as if she were quoting holy scripture. “He’s infected us with whatever was inside him. We’re both diseased.”_

_“Shut up, Anne,” Mary snaps, not liking the flat coldness of her own voice, how it mirrors her sister’s. “I’m not like him and you’re not either! You’re beautiful and kind and-”_

_Anne produces holds up her hands in silent counterargument. Mud and blood streak her fingers. The argument dies on Mary’s lips.)_

All thoughts of attempting to befriend Shay died a swift death that day. She couldn’t imagine being part of Shay’s world, talking music and debating bands with cool kids who hang on Shay’s every word. Mary didn’t even know most of the modern bands and DJs Shay was name-dropping, still trapped by her upbringing in the world of her father’s music, oldies dripping in sentimentality, romanticism, and lyrics she used to focus on to push away thoughts of the things going wrong in her life. Mary often laid awake thinking about the things she would do with girls like Shay if she could have, the slumber parties and epic adventures they could have gone on if only her father let her. She imagined showing a cool girl her gorgeous house, impressing her with her room’s chandelier, and solidifying their best friend status with a gift of some of the endless jewelry Gaius purchased for her. Then she would introduce this theoretical girl to all her favorite oldies. And in her fantasy, she wouldn’t be laughed at or called silly. They would listen and talk and she would ‘accidentally’ let her hand brush the other girl’s…

Lost in revisiting her old fantasy, she didn’t notice Shay approach her until the taller girl leaned down and touched her hand. Her nails were painted a searing neon yellow-green. It snapped Mary out of her reverie in an instant.

“You’re new here, right?” Shay asked, more to be polite than to actually inquire about it. Mary nodded timidly. “You can come sit with us, if you want.”

It was all she wanted, but something within her didn’t know how to admit to it. “Oh, I… I don’t know. Your friends don’t really like me.”

That statement was baseless, she knew, baseless and kind of mean. Nobody at this school disliked her. She knew they didn’t, it was just nerves about being somewhere new and in a school ten times the size of her old one. That the school was full of kids who knew how to dress made it worse. She’d spent her life in school uniforms before this, with no need to try to figure out what to wear to school on a daily basis. Mary wasn’t cool. She wasn’t uncool or unlikable, but she wasn’t someone worth noticing anymore.

She used to wish she would be invisible. _(“My swan, my gorgeous glory, my diamond…” Gaius murmured, latching a diamond necklace around her neck, the stone cold as ice. She felt more bare in that moment than when the spotlight was on her onstage at her ballet recital._

_No wonder the other girls hated her. She hated herself, too, in that moment.)_

“People like you,” Shay laughed, like Mary was being silly. “Vanessa says you draw awesome stuff in Art, not to mention your paintings! Seriously, that is so cool. And Amber wants to know your secret to getting Mr. Gallagher to stop being a jerk to the whole class; he’s actually talking instead of yelling for once. Plus, Kreine thinks you’d be a good fit for the Math Club – I mean, you caught an error in the textbook, that’s kind of unheard of, you know? We like you.”

No one had ever done this sort of thing for Mary, spelled out for her how people felt about her and emphasized the positive. Gaius hadn’t seen the value in it. _(“Beware free silver and silver tongues,” he told the lawyer he was mentoring, fresh out of law school and still with dying stars in his eyes. Gaius would make that light go out.)_ There _was_ value in it, though, a warm almost-giddy feeling that washed over her in a sudden wave. Shay thought she was cool. Shay was the coolest girl here. Therefore, as insane as it sounded, as much as they were opposites, there had to be a little bit of truth to the statement.

She got up, and let Shay lead her over to her friends.


	2. Pink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for some discussion of death.

After Mary’s mother died, Gaius didn’t seem to know how to deal with his daughters’ grief.

He knew how to deal with his: he ignored it. Gaius Bromfield was a master at acting like nothing was wrong, and if Mary hadn’t known her father so well, she would have been fooled by his fake smiles, even tone of voice, and flawless eye contact. He tried very hard not to act like a man in mourning because he sensed, rightly so, that if he broke down his daughters would freak out, and they had enough on their plates already. Anne was nine, Mary nearly eight. They were too young to process the loss, barely old enough to really understand the detailed medical explanation he’d given them. Having months beforehand to try to prepare them for it didn’t help, or if it did, he couldn’t see the benefit of it. They were just as destroyed by it as if it had happened out of the blue.

Anne sobbed so hard she made herself sick, more than once. He kept a bucket in her room and told Mary to tell him if Anne was sick. His youngest daughter was good at comforting Anne, wrapping her arms around her and holding onto her, rubbing her back and murmuring soft encouragement to her until the worst of it was over. Mary wasn’t sure what to do, so she tried a little of everything. She brought Anne cold washcloths and hair ties and tissues. She warmed up a blanket for her in the dryer like their mom did when they were sad. Sometimes she just held onto her and prayed. She was young enough to still kind of believe in God, maybe-sort-of, because their mom had and she wanted to believe their mom was right and was in Heaven.

The week it took to arrange a funeral involved a lot of day-drinking on Gaius’ part, a lot of sobbing from Anne and a lot of prayer from Mary. None of them were looking forward to it. Mary overheard her father talking with her uncle Andrew, telling him he didn’t want to go and make it real.

“It’s already real,” Uncle Andrew said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not going to go away. You can’t skip funerals and pretend it’s all okay forever.”

“I could try,” Gaius muttered, stubborn to the end, though his eyes were suspiciously shiny and for once, his false smile had slipped off his face. “Drew, I – I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to exist without Elizabeth, and I’m not sure I can learn how.”

Her uncle smiled at him, kindly. “Sure you can. You’re Gaius Bromfield, you’re bar-certified to practice law in five states and you speak three languages. You’ve taught yourself harder things before. And Cinci isn’t that far away – you and the two princesses are welcome anytime, you know that.”

Gaius nodded, but Mary could see from the way he didn’t meet Uncle Andrew’s eyes that he wasn’t sure.

She hadn’t known that grownups could be scared. But that made sense, she guessed. She was scared, too. The world seemed a lot bigger and the house felt so much emptier without her mom. Everything was sort of wrong, sort of off, like a painting where someone had used half the wrong colors but gotten the shapes right. When Mary had nightmares, she’d always known that if it was really bad, she could go to her mom and she would get her tea and talk to her until she felt better. Sometimes she did that with Gaius, too. Now there was no one there to hold him, either. Being an adult didn’t mean he wasn’t sad or afraid, though she knew he’d never tell her how bad he felt. Mary wished she could hug him and make him feel better. She knew from trying with Anne that there was no making this better that way.

Mary slipped away, eavesdropping complete, and wondered if there was any way to make this better at all.

* * *

Anne was mad at Mary for not being sad enough. She was angry at Gaius for the same thing.

Mary wasn’t sure how to feel. She wasn’t sure she was feeling anything at all, actually. Nothing really felt real. The house felt like it did in her dreams, dreams where she’d get lost and go in circles through the halls again and again until she woke up. She knew she should have cried, she wanted to cry, but nothing came out. She didn’t want to eat, or play, or go to school. All she wanted to do was go back to bed, where everything felt a little less off. Everything was still wrong, of course, but it was a lot more bearable under five layers of blankets and with her arms wrapped around her toy tree frog, Captain Leggy. Gaius didn’t critique her, which was a testimony to how bad things were – it was a rare day when he let anything go without commentary – but Anne scowled at her more than a little.

When she hauled herself out of the bed for the funeral, she still didn’t know what she was feeling. The world was too bright, all washed out colors and quiet, stillness mixed with stale air. She made her way over to her closet and stared into it. She knew black was a funeral color. She knew she needed to grab clothes and put them on. Her hands remained at her side regardless, dead weight, the urge to crawl back into bed almost overwhelming. For a few moments, she half-forgot where she was, physically here yet far away, drifting, helpless, a world apart from all this misery.

“Mary?” her father said from her doorway, and it was rare for her to think of him as father first and Gaius second, yet it was hard to deny how much like a lost little kid she felt then. “Mary, you’ve been standing there for… a while. Are you okay, Princess?”

She couldn’t make her mouth move to reply. Instead she just shrugged, unsure. Something in his usually iron features softened. He walked into her room, looking into her closet for her, picking out things for her, doing the things she couldn’t bring herself to do, and she simply let him. What did it matter? There was no getting out of this, no going back to bed where she didn’t feel so awful, no way to be sad enough for Anne or happy enough to be normal. Everything was all messed up. Nothing made any sense anymore.

“Maybe we’ll wake up, and this’ll be a dream again,” she suggested to Gaius, and he shut his eyes, sighing deeply. “Then we won’t have to go.”

“…have you had this dream before?” he asked, quieter than she’d ever known him to be before, oddly toneless.

She nodded. He rummaged through her closet, looking for appropriate shoes, but she could tell by the way he swallowed and looked away that he’d seen her response. “In my dream, none of the bad things happened. Mom comes in when we’re not looking and tells us it was a nightmare. Then she asks you to make biscuits and gravy, and everything’s okay again.”

He didn’t reply. Gaius had paused, contemplative, rolling the mental image over in his head. After a moment, however, he simply turned and looked at her. They were both so, so tired. “Things are going to be okay again. It’s just… it’s just going to take time. Just hang on, and let me know if I can make this easier on you. You need to tell me if I can help, okay?”

“…can I wear my pink shoes?” Mary asked, wincing at the incredulous look he shot her. Too many years of him raising his voice to her had taught her fear responses that were ingrained even now, when she was barely there. “All the black makes me feel like…”

“Like?” Gaius prompted, never willing to let his children trail off mid-sentence.

“Like I kinda wanna crawl in the coffin with her. Anne doesn’t like me and I don’t know if you do, either,” she didn’t dare look at him when she said it, “and I think maybe Mom would be happier if I went with her, and if I’m already dressed like it I…”

This time, for the first time in his life, Gaius let her not finish her sentence. He picked out her pink shoes, the Mary Jane shoes with the heart buckles, and handed them to her, but did not let go right away. He stayed like that, kneeled down in front of her, until she inevitably glanced at his face out of unbearable curiosity and dread apprehension.

She’d never seen him look so _human_ , soft and vulnerable and hurt almost beyond words. “I like you. I love you. You’re precious to me, Mary, like a diamond. You’re mine – my kid, my pride and joy, my everything. Everything I do, I’m doing for you. I want you to be happy, and your mom would want that, too. I’m not… I don’t know how to be a good father. My father was never good to me. But even when I’m loud or mean or I’m doing everything wrong, please, please know that I _do_ like you, love you and want you right here. I never want to see you in a coffin. Do you understand?”

Mary made herself nod, unsure how to deal with all the things he’d said, and he wrapped her up in a rare hug, pink shoes squished inbetween them.


End file.
